


A Legacy of Blood and Bread

by Meatball42



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Percy Jackson and the Olympians - Rick Riordan, The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fusion, Ballet, But at least she gets yoga, Canon-Typical Violence, Child Soldiers, Comics Influence, Cooking, Demigod Clint Barton, Demigod Natasha Romanov, Future Team as Family, Gen, Kid Natasha Romanov, Natasha Romanov needs therapy, Red Room (Marvel)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-14
Updated: 2019-09-14
Packaged: 2020-09-19 07:29:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,392
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20327389
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Meatball42/pseuds/Meatball42
Summary: A girl whose name is not really Natalia is raised to kill by people who are not like her. When the Red Room girls break free, she must relearn what she has been taught about the world and her rightful place in it.





	A Legacy of Blood and Bread

**Author's Note:**

  * For [SinginInTheRaine](https://archiveofourown.org/users/SinginInTheRaine/gifts).

> Thank you phnelt for betaing with a sharp eye for grammar and a steady hand on nuance and emotion.
> 
> The mythology/world-building in this fic is based off the Percy Jackson books. Some details in this story may be contradicted by that canon. This is done entirely because I like my way better, and not at all because it has been several years since I read them.
> 
> See the end notes for headcanons you didn't ask for.

They don’t tell us what we are, but we sense it.

The girls who are more beautiful than anyone, but weak: they fall again and again under fists, staff, and knives.

The girls who are big and strong, but let the fight take them over, and are defeated by wilier opponents.

The girls who can make weapons out of anything, but break so easily.

And the girls like me, who are smart, so, so smart, and cannot fall asleep at night for all the things we think of.

We don’t know what we are, but we know that there is something beyond us, haunting us.

And none of it matters, because they day one of us refuses to fight is the day she dies.

“This is the Winter Soldier,” Madame tells us. “He will train you… for now.”

The new trainer stands still as the night. We are curious, but we do not show it. The girls who showed too much emotion died years ago.

The Soldier is an expert in every weapon we have seen. He walks in silence, he can become near-invisible in the shadows. To fight him is to be overtaken by fear, even for us.

None of the adults have ever been like us, but this one…

We know our own.

And so does he.

The trainers never help us, but this one—he heals us of our wounds, sometimes, when no one is watching. The shadows attend him, swirl around his hands and sink into our skin. At the end of the day, those of us who have screams inside our heads can be settled by his hand, drifting off into comforting darkness.

The Soldier treats us all the same, does not play favorites like some of the instructors. Favorites lived, and others died. He doesn’t play games with our lives, and this is a new idea to us.

We like it. We come to like him.

Petra breaks our silence. She is the oldest, one of the beautiful girls, one of the few who did not fall to the tougher girls. She is the first to be sent on a mission, and when she comes back, she does not speak for days. She trains and studies and eats and sleeps but inside, she is blank.

We are all frightened, but fear is something that has been trained out of us, and nothing changes.

One day, when the Soldier is instructing us on explosives, we are alone. The Soldier is us, so we are alone, but he is not one of us truly, so when Petra speaks, we all freeze inside.

“_Adjuva nos. Sine auxilio tuo, et non possimus evadere._”

The Soldier stares at her.

“_Βοήθησέ μας. Δεν μπορούμε να ξεφύγουμε χωρίς εσένα._”

She doesn’t say, “Help us. We cannot escape without you.” Not where the other trainers can understand.

He turns on his heel and leaves the training room.

That night, we escape.

Some of us, at least.

The compound alarm goes off, shrieking, loud enough to intermittently cover up the sounds of gunfire and screaming. We wake up in our beds, shackled as always, and Petra is already awake at the door. She has the keys. They are passed down the room.

When we are all free, we line up, silent and ready. We understand that this is the fight that will decide the rest of our lives. There are dogs out there, and guns, and grown soldiers and servants of the Room with more training than any of us, but they are not Us.

They have deceived Us, and taken from Us, and hurt Us. They are not worth killing for.

We all fight on our way through the facility. Petra’s voice brings some guards to a halt so others can slay them, but she is shot down soon, and we go on without her.

We raid the armory, and then everything is faster and bloodier.

By the time we reach the garage, there are only eight of us. Only one is like me, and she succumbed to the voices in her head years ago. All that is left is momentum and bloodlust. I shoot her in the head when she is not looking.

The others aim their weapons at me, but when they see what I have done, they slowly accept my judgement.

We steal two vehicles and the eldest drive us away.

The Soldier meets us in Baku. He makes us stand in a line and stares at each of us.

There is one beautiful girl left alive. Two girls who are big and strong. One who can make a weapon out of anything. One whose drive to win has kept her alive. One who never misses a target with a gun or a knife. And me.

He gives us each an address in a different country. He says he will see us if he can. Then he leaves.

My address is in English. I struggle to read it, like all of us are struggling. Only one address is in Greek, and it is was given to one of the strong girls, who speaks Latin.

We stay together that night, and in the morning, we promise in our true languages—the Greek and Latin that we were forbidden to speak but always knew in our hearts—to never harm each other.

It is not the kind of promise that is normally long-lived, but neither are we.

It takes me two months to get to New York. I know how to navigate the world, but I have never visited it unsupervised. There are monsters, as I have been warned, but they are easy to kill as long as I do not look at them too closely. The humans are harder to ignore, but one solid strike and running away quickly convinces most that I am not worth taking an interest in.

The address is in a place called Brooklyn. It is a residential building with a doorman, who I slip by easily. I find the right door without a struggle and let myself inside.

The apartment seems normal. No clutter, no distractions. The most unusual thing is that the refrigerator is overfull with fruits and vegetables and meat. The bedroom is tidy, clean.

In a drawer, I find a sheet of strange paper. I have never seen its like before, but it feels right in my hands. In dark ink, there are words that look right to my eyes, that flow right off the page.

Greek.

Quietly, I am relieved. The Soldier has sent me to someone like us.

There are three bugs in the room. I leave them in place, and wait.

Hours later, someone unlocks the door. I turn a lamp on as they open it and stand where I can be seen. One hand is behind me, on the grip of my firearm, and with the other I hold up a finger over my lips.

A tall man, strong like the Soldier, stops short in the doorway. He looks me over with quick eyes, takes in the rest of the apartment that I have left untouched. He beckons me to leave.

On the roof of the building, I give him the note with the address the Soldier gave me. He stares down at it for a long minute.

“Where did you get this?”

His face looks like hope and despair mixed. They look like the last light in someone’s eyes, the call for mercy, before you snap their neck.

I don’t answer.

_ “Quis dedit tibi hanc?” _he repeats, clumsily.

He doesn’t sound like us. Suddenly unsure, I edge away, gripping my weapon again.

The man holds up his hands. “Wait, I’m sorry. If he… if he really sent you to me… I’ll do whatever I can to help you. What do you need?”

What do I need?

That, I do not know.

The man introduces himself as Steve. He says it without thought, so simply that I can tell it’s the truth. I don’t have such an easy answer, so I give him one of my aliases.

We return to his apartment and he watches with widening eyes as I remove and carefully destroy the bugs. Then he gets angry and goes to make a phone call.

When he returns, he stands with his hand awkward and empty. I wait, ready.

“Have you eaten dinner?” he asks.

“No.”

He goes to the kitchen and begins suggesting meals. I don’t recognize many of them, and those that I do, I don’t know how to make. I don’t reply.

Eventually, starts to cook by himself. I watch him in silence.

The first few days, we do not know what to do with each other. Steve tries to speak to me, and I don’t know how to reply. English is still foreign to me, though I have been trained in it, and the questions he asks are about feelings, family, the future. All things I don’t understand.

He leaves for work, lingeringly, unsure whether he should leave me. I stare at him until he goes, and spend the days out in the neighborhood. If Brooklyn is to be my new home ground, I must know every inch of it, every pattern, every resident and every intruder. This is how I have been trained.

I sleep on the couch. There is a spare bedroom, but it is filled with an easel and a desk which stands oddly vertical, and cabinets and shelves of art supplies. Steve apologizes, but I am indifferent. I could have slept on cold stone. The couch is fine.

Steve doesn’t seem to like that answer.

He is a good cook. He likes to bake sourdough, filling up the apartment with its scent, and make thick stews to dip it in. He hums out of key as he chops vegetables and kneads dough, his oversized muscles never tiring. He uses spices I have never seen before. I watch him as he works in order to learn the way the people do things here. 

The first time I realize I am feeling something, it is about this: that once he gets used to it, Steve lets me watch him, all the time. It feels as though I have been welcomed into this space. As though I fit into some empty place that had been waiting for me.

It is a strange sensation.

After a week, Steve sits down across from me at the table and tells me what I am. What all of us are.

“Did… they teach you anything about Greek or Roman mythology?” he asks.

“Stories are for children,” I report.

He sighs. “Stories are information,” he corrects gently. “You, and the others, I bet… you’re the mortal children of gods. Do you have trouble reading English, or… Russian, I guess?”

“Most of us do.” He doesn’t comment on the careful avoidance.

“It’s because your brains are hard-wired for Ancient Greek or Roman. I don’t know which you are. I can give you some things to read.”

“Yes, please.”

He stares at me. I continue sitting up straight and still, as is proper, but he still looks perplexed and sad.

“Okay Natalia. That’s what we’ll do.”

The papers he gives me read like a story. Perhaps, like memoirs. They sound outlandish, unbelievable. But there are details that I know in my gut are correct. Like the son of Hephaestus, who could make a weapon out of anything, or the daughters of Aphrodite who tended to be weaker physically than the others.

I read the stories of these strangers and I see in them my fallen sisters. When Steve is not around, I let my body shake and cry the way it wants to.

Emotions are a weakness. Weaknesses are not to be suppressed, but identified and nullified. Crying is a necessary act, sometimes.

I know this, but it still feels terrible.

“Are you… one of us?” I ask uncertainly one night, while Steve cooks dinner.

He came back with a cut on his face tonight, the shiny pink of healing scabs. An hour later, it is gone. 

He stirs the roux as he talks to me. “Not… really. I volunteered for a procedure that was supposed to make me stronger, better able to protect my country. I thought it was science, but it was actually a ritual that called for the blessing of a Greek god.”

“Which one?” I ask. I page through my memorized facts about the gods. I hold each of my sisters up against Steve's body, his actions.

“It was sorta open-ended. Dr. Erskine was sure surprised when I told him who came. It was Artemis, the goddess of hunting. She asked me what I would do with a blessing. I told her about the Nazis and she said it was a worthy fight, and offered me her strength.”

“Artemis is the goddess of chastity,” I point out.

He blushes, on his cheeks and down the back of his neck. I file away that information. Weaknesses exist to be exploited.

“Uh, yeah. She is.”

He says nothing more on that subject, and I don’t bring it up again.

One day, Steve brings home another man.

I hide when they come in, one of my guns drawn, ready for attack, to protect Steve if this new figure is an enemy.

“Natalia?” Steve says, loud enough to be heard through the apartment. “I have someone I want you to meet.”

The new man remains stock-still in a way that is so very familiar.

I step to where they can see me. I don’t put my weapon away.

Steve frowns when he sees it. His reflexes are excellent, so his readying for a fight is very subtle, but I recognize it.

One of the girls like me had that quality, once, and I don’t forget a thing.

“Hey,” says the new man. “I’m Clint. I work for SHIELD.”

“Natalia,” I say politely.

There is a pause, as though I am expected to continue, but I refuse.

This ‘Clint’ watches me with sharp eyes. Steve looks between us, uncertain. That makes me feel less secure, if he is doubting this other person.

“I go by Hawkeye,” Clint says. “My speciality is long-range weapons, and I never miss. Νομίζω ότι είστε σαν εμένα,” he says in Greek, fluent in a way I know in my heart.

_ I think you’re like me. _

I was taught to trust no one. I was taught that only the Red Room was to be believed, obeyed. I was taught to speak a dozen languages and suppress the ones which came naturally. I was taught to kill the girls like me.

I do not want to kill Clint, or Steve, although they are not Red Room. They are like me, like my sisters, like the Soldier who set us free. 

We never would have broken free of the Red Room, I realize, if we did not have the Soldier to unite us. Set upon each other as we were, any insurrection from within would have been betrayed to the instructors immediately. But he was outsider enough for us to trust in him, rather than each other. We believed there would be something worthwhile outside of the Red Room’s rules because we saw that someone like us was out there.

If I were to follow the rules of my training, I should kill Steve and Clint, who work for SHIELD, an enemy of the Red Room. If they knew where I came from, what would they do to me?

But Clint knows what it is like to have too many thoughts in your head to fall asleep, and he speaks to me in Greek. Steve writes it in flowing, beautiful letters, and looks up Russian recipes to cook for me.

I don’t want to hurt them because they are like me. I am like them, and we each occupy a same-shaped space in the apartment, a space the Red Room could never understand, as much as they tried to squash it out of existence.

I don’t know if this is what the Soldier intended when he sent me to Steve, when he made each of us swear not to fight our sisters. But I like these two people who have shown me kindness, and I want to belong here in this apartment in Brooklyn.

And now, I am free to belong wherever I like.

When I have been in Brooklyn for a month, Clint shows up with a new identity for me. He has an American passport and birth certificate, a card for the New York Public Library. The name on the documents is Natasha Rogers.

“He sent you to me for a reason,” Steve says.

He always gets that look on his face when he mentions the Soldier. We don’t talk about it.

Steve takes time off from work. It is the summer now. He says that in the fall, I will have to go to school, to blend in.

I have never been to a school. Their goal is not to create spies, so what do they teach?

“Reading, writing, math, science,” Steve explains. He is looking over brochures for schools in the area. Apparently, some are better than others, or focus on science or art. “Do you like music or dance?”

I sit next to him so I can look at the brochures as well. One of them has girls in leotards and pointe shoes. I stare at it for long enough that Steve notices.

We tour the school. I am checking for cameras, escape routes, weapons on the people we pass in the halls. Steve is asking questions about student-teacher ratios, about college.

The people here do not seem very concerned with their personal protection. That seems to be normal, in Brooklyn. Hardly anyone carries more than a single knife.

We see a summer class practicing. The students smile, talk amongst themselves during a break. The teacher never hits them. She takes one girl aside to correct her form and the girl does not look as though she is pushing down fear, that she will be disposed of if she does not perform up to standard.

The only question I ask our tour guide is about discipline. The guide replies with words about school spirit, enthusiasm, self-discipline and teamwork.

I don’t understand.

When we return to the apartment, Steve hugs me.

I don’t understand that, either.

On a walk through the city, I find a Russian bakery. I inspect it via the glass front of a store across the street, watching people go in and out. I can smell it even from so far away.

I do not miss Russia. I have not broken a bone or killed anyone since I came to Brooklyn, and there is no amount of strong tea or comforting sounds in my ears that could make up for that difference. But the smells haunt my dreams.

Steve notices that I am distracted one day as we stretch out in the living room. We have been learning yoga together. Steve says it will help with his flexibility and my nightmares. Today, I miss a pose. He taps on my knee to let me know he has seen, and I quickly correct, but he doesn’t smack the offending limb or assign me punishment.

“What are you thinking about?” he asks.

I hesitate, but I have already made a mistake today. Hiding this might anger him. “I want творо́жники,” I say quietly.

He makes a confused face. I don’t move.

All he does is say, “Can you show me?”

We go to the bakery. Steve buys both of us a small stack of rich pancakes with a jam on the side that has whole strawberries in it. I thank the man behind the counter in Russian and he smiles at me, calls me a good girl.

I don’t notice that I am smiling while I eat until Steve says, “I miss my mother’s cooking,” and I stop smiling.

“She was from Ireland,” he continues. “She liked to cook things that reminded her of home. I didn’t get to see Ireland until… recently. But she knew how to make it feel like we were there.”

School has started. Steve drops me off every morning with a lunchbox. The other students are dropped off by their parents, or occasionally a nanny. I have tried to ignore the strangeness that I feel when I see these adults with these children who look like them. There were no parents in the Red Room, and I did not care.

Yet I find my eyes burning while Steve talks about his mother.

“She had another son before me,” he says quietly. “There was a breakout in our building and he died when he was six months old. So did my birth mother. I was around the same age, and my father was fighting in Europe, so my mother took me in.”

He puts his hand over mine and looks at me seriously.

“I don’t know much about being a parent, but I’m going to do my best to be a good parent for you. If there’s ever anything you want, like—tvorozniki,” he tries, “or anything you need, please tell me. And I’ll do my best to make sure you can have it.”

Inside me is doing strange things. My chest hurts like failure. My cheeks are hot and my eyes are wet. What I want is to be curled up in bed with a heavy quilt over my head.

I don’t realize that I am crying until Steve pulls his chair alongside mine and holds me close to his side. Some long-buried instinct tells me how to lean on him without fear.

In December, there is a recital. I have been careful not to show off, so that I blend in, so I do not have a big role.

I’m not afraid to tell Steve this. The only times he has corrected me are when I am doing something he deems dangerous, like juggling knives, or when something could be better, like when he suggests putting Doritos on a sandwich. He doesn’t get angry when I speak in Russian or Greek without thinking, or when he finds me sitting on the couch in the middle of the night, my thoughts on battle strategy rather than rest.

And indeed, he doesn’t even ask how difficult the dance is, only if I am enjoying the rehearsals. And if he can invite some friends to watch me.

“Friends from SHIELD?” I ask.

“Sort of. We’re on a special team, not really a part of SHIELD. It’s complicated. Clint works with them, too.”

I am unsure, but if Clint and Steve are both on this team, they must be acceptable. “Okay.”

When the performance comes along, I spot Steve in the crowd of parents and community members in the audience of the school’s auditorium. He has his phone out and is filming me with a huge smile on his face. A tall woman with red hair paler than mine sits beside him, and beside her, a dark-haired man with a goatee. Clint is seated next to them, whispering into the ear of a blond man even larger than Steve.

I wonder which god is his parent.

It is easy to watch them while moving through the simple patterns of this dance. The work at this school is not challenging, not the math, or the reading, or the dance. Talking to people my own age is the hardest part, but even on this stage, there are girls and boys who I talk to, who look happy to see me when I arrive at school.

It is a strange new life, but… I find myself happy here.

In the corner of the audience, by the exit doors, I spy a tall brunette woman with a pale gray dress and stormy eyes. Although I have not noticed her until this moment, once I see her I cannot take my eyes off her. She is looking right at me, not at any of the other dancers.

In my gut, I know: she is like me.

The woman smiles at me, gives me a single nod. And then, the dance calls for me to turn, and when I look back, she is gone.

Steve meets me after I change into regular clothes and come back to the auditorium. His friends are hanging around by the door, but he and Clint are chatting while they wait for me.

They tell me I danced well, but I am distracted. I tell them about the woman with eyes like a storm. 

Steve and Clint share a look, and then Steve kneels down in front of me.

“I think that was your mother, sweetheart,” he says gently, holding my hands.

"Why didn’t she come talk to me?” I ask. My voice comes out wobbly.

Steve thinks for a long minute. “Maybe she knows that we’re okay without her. The gods can attract a lot of trouble. Maybe she wanted you to know she loves you, but also wants you to live a happy life.”

I consider this. It makes sense, tactically. I know that all the girls like me—my closest sisters, the other clever, quick ones—would have approved of a sneaky plan like that. And I know that someone like us would only allow themselves to be seen if it served a purpose.

“Okay,” I say. It does make sense. But my stomach still hurts.

Steve hugs me and I hide my face in his neck until the feeling of being warmly squeezed makes the hurt go away.

“You were amazing,” he tells me, wiping a tear off my cheek. “You want to make something special for dinner?”

“Blini?”

Steve laughs. “Maybe this time I won't burn myself, right? Sounds good.”

He gets up and we head to the door. Clint walks next to me, his sharp eyes scanning the crowd with even more focus than usual.

Steve takes my hand as we got to meet his friends. He stands beside me and Clint stands behind us. Their friends introduce themselves to me and they all talk and poke fun at each other as we leave. Being in this small crowd feels good. Soon, my sadness has melted away.

**Author's Note:**

> **So what was up with the Red Room?**  
In my imagination, the Red Room's primary training facility was protected by a web of spells built up over decades to protect it from notice by gods or monsters. Those demigoddesses who were identified were stolen from their human parents and told they were orphans. When one of Natasha's surviving sisters has a proper run-in with their godly parent (probably one of the daughters of Ares), the people running the Red Room are in for a _real_ nasty surprise.
> 
> **Where did the other Red Room trainees end up?**  
The Soldier is not much concerned with right or wrong at this point, only safety. He sends them to whoever he thinks will protect them and nurture their abilities without actually enslaving them like the Red Room. Natasha was sent to Steve because he got brain enhancements along with his muscles and the Soldier knew that Natasha was one of the girls who had trouble sleeping because of Athena's influence. The daughter of Hephaestus was sent to Doctor Doom because he is territorial about protecting people he sees as his own, and this girl will be crazy happy with both magic and tech to play with. The rest? Heroes and villains and neutral parties alike. 
> 
> **Godly ancestry**  
Petra- daughter of Aphrodite  
Natasha- daughter of Athena  
Winter Soldier- the 'serum' he received, modeled after Erskine's formula, included blood from a demigod child of Hades. Combined with a ritual, this gave him a variety of abilities, but he will never be claimed as a son of Hades.  
Steve- granted entry to the Hunters of Artemis while he hunts down Hydra, his nemesis, and will eventually be kicked out when that quest is through (though he hasn't realized that's what happened and won't for a while, since Hydra is still going strong at this point)  
Clint- son of Apollo


End file.
